Our Monster Blog

All done bar the shouting

Kaye McAlpine — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:27:05 +0000

Well, almost … it’s all the paperwork that takes the time at this point in the process, which nobody who was making the films has to be bothered with – it falls to the producer and exec. producer in this case.

While everyone involved has seen the movies, the red carpet event has still to happen (holidays and international film festivals do tend to get in people’s way, these days), so watch this space for everyone’s pics from the big event, which will take place at the end of August.

post productions

Kaye McAlpine — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:18:07 +0000

Everybody is really busy, despite the glorious summer weather. Moving images have been edited to match the audio tracks we laid down weeks ago. We now know what makes us scared officially! Chickens! Spiders! Guns! Zombies! The Dark! The list goes on. We need a few bits of original music to slot in – did you know occasional workshop mentor Ainslie has has some serious musical credentials (as well as have a top 10 single?

We now have official titles for the two films: Nightmares from Hell – these are the things which give us the heeby jeebies. We don’t even know why some of the time. Thomas Tells Tales is the best way we could come up with to focus on some real concerns. We could have got really dark, but that was going to be too owrrying for some of our filmmakers, so we went for the most empowering option – humour. There’s a park near to the school, which has had its once-excellent play structure burned to bits over a serious of attacks. It really bothers everyone who lives nearby and uses the park.

How people deliberately make themselves look bother a lot of people in and around the school – we tried to capture that too – but again we sent down the route of exaggeration and humour. With a mix of live action and animation, there are hundreds of shots here (and in the other movie too). We’re all happy to put our names to them!

scene by scene, move by move

Kaye McAlpine — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:30:14 +0000

The last few weeks have been very focussed. The scenes were broken down into their individual components – and some people got a bit of a surprise how much work goes into even a second or two of animation – and everybody had allocated tasks. There have been flickering flames, undulating cucumbers, sinister clowns, the odd zombie, creeping, crawling spider legs (and bearing in mind that SPIDERS were the prime fear of an awful lot of people, we’re amazed we got through these), and an awful lot more.

setting up for another session

The light boxes we constructed have proven very useful, as it means a number of stations can be animating at the same time (how else do you think we get through all the shots, you Mums and Dads reading this?)

At times there have been loads of animation stations, with everyone hard at work.

rolling eyeballs!

Live action has also been on the cards, and luckily the weather held out on the days we had allocated for that filming … we might have some budding actors and directors here! The serious kit that this takes – sound kit, cameras etc – has proven to be really interesting to some of the participants, and there has been plenty of time to find out how this all works.

animation continues … tiny movements!

Kaye McAlpine — Fri, 28 May 2010 18:35:49 +0000

Rob’s group continued animation several sections, to represent what scares us: the usual suspects are there (check out the fears list), but there are a few left-field options too … actually, a

Everyone is now realising how much input goes into animation. Tiny movements are the key, no matter what anyone says!

Live action was on the cards for Madevi’s group. Luckily the rain held off so the filmmakers could get the sound kit and get a Z1 out and about. The animators continued working on the silhouette aspects of that movie.

We’re making movies

Kaye McAlpine — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:45:29 +0000

Well, last week we started on the scenes for the two films.

With a mix of live action and silhouette animation, one of the movies has a linear narrative. We all have our fingers crossed for a continuation of the sunny weather we all enjoyed this weekend, as we need to continue outdoor filming. The filmmaking team have all had a chance of animation, acting and being behind the camera, and now everyone has chosen their roles. We’re setting up several light box stations, so the animators can keep working on the silhouette scenes, while the live action is being filmed.

The other film is more abstract, and considers what scares people. Everyone is still in some debate about how it starts, but this one will hopefully be more light hearted, while still showing what scares us all … and there are some really odd bits and pieces in there!

Films taking shape

Kaye McAlpine — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:09:03 +0000

Last week we split into our two groups, and started working on the two film ideas.

Storyboarding options

The idea is to make two very different movies, with different styles of animation, plus some live action!

The group mentored by Madevi worked on storyboarding, which expanded on the bare bones of the script which had been worked through the previous week.

monsters ...

This was quite an intense session, between the storyboarding and discussion points, but everyone worked very hard. The great things was that we got enough ideas to trial some live action ideas on film, with Ross taking the director’s role. Thomas took the lead role initially, and then Daniel provided the lead character for the final scenes.

The second group worked on audio for their movie, with groups of two discussing what frightened them … spiders and other long legged creepie crawlies seem to be responsible for many daytime and night time fears. What we’ll do is marry our audio clips with animation.

What we’ve been working on is the beginning of the animatics, so we can finalise just what’ll be going on in the movies … it’s all very exciting!

The Groups

Kaye McAlpine — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:07:49 +0000

The Groups:

The two groups are:

Group 1 – led by Madevi

Salma Ahmad
Thomas Aitken
Emma Bryden
Millie Cook
Mairi Espie
Kevin Jeffrey
Lotte Latimer
Nellie Little
Ross MacMillan
Alison Manley
Bea Riemersma
Daniel Rogerson
Rochelle Ross
Tara Russell
Hannah Strang
Jelena Yendale

Group 2 – led by Rob

Yousseff Abu Helewa
Philip Aitken
Joanne Boyle
Hannah Cameron
Alex Dinwoodie
Jem Grant
Joe Hathaway
Sophie Kerr
Joseph Mayer
Dan Quale
Ryan Quinn
James Rainey
Sam Reid
Charlotte Roulston
Calvin Singh

Ideas taking shape

Kaye McAlpine — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:49:16 +0000

We’ve a had a few intense sessions now, trying to get the concept of the final movies to take shape: brainstorming the ideas of what it is that creates fear – why are we frightened or uncomfortable in some situations, what is it about particular people that makes others unsettled, and has that more to do with them or us.

We now have two distinct groups, with Madevi leading one and Rob leading the other, and we’ve been engaged in story-mapping the concepts. As a creative exercise, some ideas would need a budget close to Avatar’s, but we have the beginnings of some really strong scripts.

More information to follow …

Moving monsters

Kaye McAlpine — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:44:12 +0000

Well, the pictures are finally in. In the weeks before Easter, another batch of monsters were created, but this time instead of the large sized creatures for the pixelation tests – which were also to show just how careful you have to be when filming animation (no fingers, feet or heads in the shot, please!), various movies were created through different animation techniques.

Five bases were created, where different methods were investigated. The methods were:

cut-out animation, using a rostrum technique

shadow cut-out animation, using lightbox and overhead camerawork

zoetropes

flipbooks

stop motion animation

These sessions seem to go really quickly and brought it home to everyone how much work needs to go into even a small amount of animation.

Tagged: animating

Mood Boards, Monsters and Eyes

Kaye McAlpine — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:00:07 +0000

Another successful week’s work all round.

After some discussion about the mood boards which everyone had created, Madevi turned the attention towards creating monsters: what makes something scary doesn’t have a simple explanation. Is it the colour? Is it the shape? Is the thing reminiscent of something else?

In terms of our groups, it turns out all of these things were very important.

Unsurprisingly, dark colours (browns, greys and black) were identified as being important, when the monster is to be scary, but cold colours – blues and greens – were equally popular. When the monster is a little more friendly, brighter colours were used.

Horns, fangs, claws – sharp shapes – were very popular. The bug-type monster which has been created, and we reckon the twisting antennae are also part of these sharp shapes.

Most of all, however, scary eyes took pride of place. One, three eyes, blood-shot eyes, wobbling eyes. There are eyes all over these monsters – and they’ll be watching you …

We created 8 monsters – of different shapes, textures and demeanours – and they’ll be running riot in some pixelations very soon, once the paint, glue and glitter has dried!

Tagged: The Monsters